This book is 640 pages long, and from what I’ve read so far, 50% of it is spent inside the narrator’s head, unnecessarily detailing all of their thoughts and emotions. Sometimes there’s whole chapters that are basically just the characters sitting and thinking about things.

It’s like the author doesn’t trust the reader to be empathetic or clever enough to deduce how a character is feeling if they don’t spend ten pages explaining their emotions in a hundred different ways. We get it! She’s conflicted! You could have communicated that in one paragraph, max!

I swear, every chapter has to have at least one instance where our protagonist, Delora, thinks to herself something along the lines of: “I can’t believe I’m here with a Duskwalker!”/“This is so wild, he’s a Duskwalker!”/“I must be insane, how can my body be responding this way to a DuSKwAlKeR!?1!” I was ready to throw my phone across the room.

Not to mention all of the world-building is accomplished through tedious exposition. The entire first chapter is basically just the protagonist thinking about her life and the town she lives in, in order to spell out to the reader everything they need to know about her backstory. It’s heavy-handed and boring to wade through.

For instance, in this story we meet Delora as she is being transported from her village to the edge of the veil in the first chapter, where we learn that the intent is to throw her from a cliff as punishment for her crimes. And through Delora’s memories, the entire story of her crimes is then explained. Imagine instead, if the story began with Delora falling from that cliff and the reader, as well as Magnar, are left to question why she’s there. What if it was only after the two of them develop a relationship built on trust that Delora reveals her story while sharing it with Magnar (and by extension the reader). That would’ve been so much more interesting and would’ve given the story so much tension and easy propulsion.

I’m sorry this seems harsh, because I enjoyed the first book in this series (even though I think this problem was prevalent to a lesser degree in that one too) but this was just too much. 270 pages in and I was like “is this thing wrapping up yet?” And I was only 40% of the way through!!